Thoughts on the World

People are a parasite on the organism that is Earth. There are too many, and Earth is trying to get over this illness through tactics that any organism would use, and becoming inhospitable. But we are attacking too many of the systems at once- polluting the oceans, killing the animals, depleting the ozone... This is such a serious infestation that Earth may never recover from us.
We are AIDS to planets.
--Inspired by James Lovelock

"When people fall in love with what seems to be a "perfect" theory (a set of rules), and they love those rules more than they love people or places... they start to see the messy reality of life as interfering with the beauty -the imagined beauty- that exists only in their ... sacred texts, whether they're economic texts, or religious texts, or some dream of racial purity... the flip side of the love is that hatred for anything or anyone that interferes with that system."

"It doesn't have the ability to think rationally, this economic model: it thinks like a drug addict. 'Where can I get my next fix?' It doesn't learn wisely. If we think of any kind of measure of natural wisdom would be if you make a mistake you correct it the next time around. But a drug addict feels terrible, and then says, 'I want more.' And unfortunately we have an economic model that thinks like a crack addict."

--Naomi Klein

"... Whenever something bad happens like a war, like a big accident, or a tsunami, or a giant storm, anything like that, you find there are people that always freeze on the spot, and get killed. And there are others who recognize the warning signs, take action, and move, and save themselves. And they get selected. And in the course of the warm-up of the earth, this is going to happen: the ones with the sense of survival will migrate, and move... The others will just stay put, and hope that something will save them, and it won't."

"I don't know what to tell [my grandchildren] except the truth, what will be happening, and the options as I see them. But it's really going to be up to them. The best thing I can do is to encourage them, and get them to regard it with a sense that not only is it awful, and terrible, but [that] also there's an adventure there, and a chance of improvement, and that they should continue to have their children. They shouldn't say, 'Oh, what's the point of giving birth to children now, with a world like that ahead?' the whole point of natural selection will be spoiled if they do that, because they are the very people who should be having children!"

--James Lovelock

JTDC

I would like to call your attention once again to a post from February eighth, entitled, Skeletons.

This post has once again become a potent mindset for me, although there is a slight shift from upset to defeated.

But the basic sentiment is the same.
More on this later.


Jesus Tap Dancing Christ

Technological Advances

With all our brilliance we've created ubercomputers, Tivo, and cars that park themselves.

So why is it that we still haven't found a way to synthetically produce honey?
I mean, we don't even have a honey substitute. Why is that?
We have plenty of substitutes for other things, like sugar, oil, starch, even milk. Why not honey? If we can observe the molecular composition of honey, shouldn't we also be able to come up with a way to replicate it?
Is it really that hard to do?
Are bees really that much smarter than us?

Why is it that there is no Splenda or VitaSoy of the honey world???